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The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Nov by sending them to musicaldeb@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Movies About Musicians.…

“Don’t be satisfied with half measures. ” – Marcel

Number of Times Seen – 1 (11 Nov 2018)

Brief Synopsis – Biographical film about the difficult life of the famous singer EDith Piaf as she struggled to find fame.

My Take on it – This is a film that I’ve known about ever since it came out but have avoided it ever since largely due to my general distaste for non-English language films.

Having tried for the past few months to get over that feeling, I’ve been attempting to watch more and more films in foreign languages with some success in finding new and innovative films.

This, is unfortunately not one of them.

This film is structured really poorly and looks like a complete mess no matter how one wants to view it.

The way that the narrative jumps back and forth in time seemingly at random fails to give the viewer any reason to actually start to care for this character because we don’t grow with her but rather get to view glimpses of her life like a puzzle that we need to quickly put in order to fully understand what transpired throughout her life.

The truth is, that the main reason people (myself included) are interested in seeing this film is largely due to the amazing performance by Marion Cotillard as Piaf.

She is able to transform herself into a completely different person and mesmerizes with her singing of her famous song (that this film is named for).

Cotillard was definitely very deserving of winning the Oscar for Best Actress for this amazing performance.

The film and story tho leave much to be desired and unfortunately isn’t interesting or enjoyable enough to watch.

Bottom Line – This film is a complete mess and lacks any kind of real structure. The narrative jumps back and forth in time and fails to help the viewer care at all about the story because all we actually want to see is the amazing performance of Cotillard along with the famous song she is known for singing. Cotillard was definitely deserving of winning the Oscar for Best Actress for this role because she truly transforms herself for in this performance, but the film itself leaves the viewer wanting for something much more interesting and enjoyable.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – With her performance in “La Vie en Rose”, Marion Cotillard became the first French actress to win an Oscar for a French-language film and the second to win a Best Actress Oscar, the first was Simone Signoret for Room at the Top (1959) (an English-language film). Signoret’s daughter, Catherine Allégret, portrayed Édith Piaf’s grandmother, Louise Gassion, in “La Vie en Rose”. Yves Montand, one of Piaf’s lovers, was the second husband of Simone Signoret and Catherine Allégret’s step-father. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not even close. Cotillard is superb in the lead, but the story itself is a mess.